Gator Electrical Engineers place first and third at Atlanta IEEE conference in programming and ethics.

University of Florida students brought home two awards from this year’s Southeast conference of the Institute of Electronics and Electrical Engineers, proving themselves among the top students at the programming and ethics competitions.

 

One team of three students, most of whom are enrolled in the UF College of Engineering, placed first in the conference’s programming competition, the first time UF has won the competition in recent memory. The other team won third place in the ethics competition, down one spot from last year. 

 

The IEEE Southeast conference, convened this year in Atlanta on March 5, hosts schools and researchers from throughout the Southeastern United States and Jamaica. It includes scholastic paper presentations, administrative meeting and six competitions for students.

 

Eric Schwartz, master lecturer in the department of electrical and computer engineering and faculty adviser the UF branch of IEEE, said he was proud of the student accomplishments at this year’s competition. The competition resulted in more than name recognition for the university and a plaque for the students who placed first, he said. It gave them practical experience they would not have received in class

 

“If you give them a competition, they work ridiculously hard,” Schwartz said of the students. “And if they work ridiculously hard, they’ll learn a tremendous amount.”

 

The Winners

 

Programming Team, First Place

 

The Students:

Danial Afzal, senior, computer engineering

John Iacona

Miorel Palii, junior, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences 

 

The Task: The three students, who all have programming experience, and other competing teams were assigned to create a computer program from scratch that would calculate the answers to eight word problems. 

 

The students were given a few hours to answer the problems using C and C++ coding. They had to manipulate the language to solve the complex questions. For instance, one question involved numbers that were too large for the program to calculate. So, the UF broke the numbers down into fragments and inputted them into their computer. 

 

The Win: The three UF students answered six of the eight questions  and had two more solutions prepared, although not submitted. 

 

“We had no incorrect answers, which was wonderful,” said Miorel Palii, who was chosen for the team because of his previous accomplishments in programming. 

 

The students alternated between creating the program, with one team member stationed at the computer, and scratching out answers on paper to work efficiently.

 

Brian Sapp, interim president of the IEEE branch at UF, said this is the first that he knows of that UF placed first in the programming competition.  He said the team practiced extensively and have participated in previous programming competitions.

 

“I think, in general, we have some of the best engineering students in the country,” he said.

 

Ethics Teams, third place

 

Clinton Rodgers, senior, electrical engineering

Yvette Tran

Jim Martz

 

The Task:  Analyze a case given out the morning of the competition and see if it conforms with IEEE’s code of ethics.

 

The Win: UF students were given the case of a speaker who made disparaging remarks about the engineering profession. In the scenario, an audience member defused the situation but later sent disparaging e-mails abut the speaker to other professionals in the engineering field. The UF Team argued that both of the characters broke the IEEE code of ethics, but its entry was not strong enough to win over other schools.